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De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

money.cnn.com

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Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#141

Post by goodpass »

BurningFrog wrote: post #133
godzillabrennus wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smart move. Throw enough marketing dollars at misinformation and you can convince hordes of people to doubt facts. Case in point. Despite overwhelming evidence there are people today who still debate climate change.

That's not how disbelieving works. People disbelieve facts that would cost them to believe. If I believe in climate change, I have to make expensive life changes (sell the SUV, buy a Tesla, etc). Therefore I will not believe in it. This belief is 100% honest, BTW. This is key to understand! For diamonds, the incentives are reversed. If I believe that artificial diamonds are as good as the natural kind, I can get a we…

Erm, I think it’s more like “I have a certain worldview that is only consistent if climate change isn’t real” or “this belief is part of my identity, which means the idea that it could be wrong is threatening to my identity”.

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#142

Post by sytelus »

The surprising thing for me is that synthetic diamond industry has so thoroughly failed to create marketing campaign, sales channels and branding. Even a noob like me can think of few good enough marketing slogans: "Diamonds Purer than Nature", "Perfection is never old", "Just like Kohinoor" and so on. They can create a brand of personalized diamonds with different shapes that symbolizes couple's story. They can completely overtake 3rd world countries where people would jump at 20% cheaper diamonds and most don't even know that synthetics exists.

Many technological advancements had obsoleted traditional companies. I'm surprised De Beers is still around.

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#144

Post by dragonwriter »

hutzlibu wrote: post #132
daveFNbuck wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I mean that the chemicals used in organic farming to kill living things are more harmful to humans than glyphosate is.

The (small) organic farmers I know dont use pesticides at all. And as far as I know, here in europe they would not be allowed to use anything realy toxic, when they want to have the organic label. So things are different in the US then? Or also for europe? sources please.

> The (small) organic farmers I know dont use pesticides at all.

They aren't representative of the bulk of organic food production. Overall, organic food production is, like non-organic food production, dominated by large, industrial agriculture concerns that do use pesticides.

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#145

Post by dragonwriter »

p1necone wrote: post #58
seibelj wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Educated people who hate GMO are instant signal that they don’t understand science. A good filter

Lots of smart people have problems with Monsanto's business practices rather than GMO specifically.

Most of those, too, turn out to be supported by myths about specific cases they have been spread by anti-GMO propagandists.

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#146

Post by TheMagicHorsey »

SquareWheel wrote: post #122
sametmax wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GMO are a very powerful technology. Like anything powerful, an intelligent person calls for caution. A lot of people are worrying about GMO in food because we don't have enough data about them. We are changing things that could have important biological, health and ecological impacts, but the companies producing them are not willing to test them extensively for safety during 20 years before selling them. We don't kno…

This is exactly the kind of misinformation being described above. Why would "traditional" crops going through random mutations be any safer than GMO crops going through highly controlled, highly tested mutations? It isn't a mysterious process - it's science. It allows us to create products like Golden Rice to alleviate malnutrition and increase crop yields. It's probably the only thing which has helped curtail world…

Breeding over time is slow. When you select crops over generations to improve a seed stock you are not making radical changes quickly, and you are not introducing genes from other species.

It is the pace of change and the scope of change that makes GMO crops more dangerous than those we have modified over 1000s of years of selective breeding.

And BTW, even in natural selection, there can be instances where a naturally occurring mutation causes a change in a species which has drastic and rapid implications for the environment in which it reproduces and spreads. For example the evolution of oxygen-creating organisms created a toxic environment which killed 99% of life that existed in the oxygen-free environment before those organisms came into existence.

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#147

Post by wlesieutre »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #127
ISL wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love for synthetic diamond to bring the price down on gemstones. A lot of people are engaged in arduous and risky work to produce natural stones. The environmental costs, too, are real. Modern high-quality synthetic materials, whether in gemstones or other uses, have so much to offer in fashion innovation. Indeed, diamond jewelers claim that silicon carbide (SiC) has "excess fire" as it has greater dispersion tha…

>> Their goal is probably to try to quickly drive the price of man made diamonds down to the price of Moissanite, and create a artificial distinction between natural and man made dimaonds. > Indeed, diamond jewelers claim that silicon carbide (SiC) has "excess fire" as it has greater dispersion than diamond. SiC has a greater index of refraction, which improves the properties of total-internal-reflection as well! As…

Mineral name wise, sapphires are a type of corundum. Usually blue, sometimes green, yellow, orange, or others, depending on various metals mixed into it. But if it’s red (via chromium) it’s a ruby instead.

Clear crystalline aluminum oxide you’d generally just call corundum (or aluminum oxide if you’re not feeling fancy), but that doesn’t market as well when you’re making watch faces and camera lenses out of it, so I guess we’re calling that sapphire now too.

TLDR: Gemstone naming seems a bit super arbitrary and marketing driven (not that I’m an expert on the subject)

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#148

Post by FPGAhacker »

kibwen wrote: post #26

> "Lightbox will transform the lab-grown diamond sector by offering consumers a lab-grown product they have told us they want but aren't getting: affordable fashion jewelry that may not be forever, but is perfect for right now," said De Beers CEO Bruce Cleaver. I'm simply speechless at the stupidity of this statement. A contender for one of the outright dumbest CEO-speak lies of the decade.

Natural diamonds have already been in existence forever (from a consumer point of view). The synthetic you just bought may be a day old.

In some sense of the word, one is forever, the other is the potential of forever.

That said, yeah it’s obviously meant to cast doubt on the longevity of synthetics. But I don’t think stupid is the right word for it. Malicious comes to mind.

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#149

Post by dragonwriter »

sametmax wrote: post #112
p1necone wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of smart people have problems with Monsanto's business practices rather than GMO specifically.

Also, the fact is that Monsanto, which has had trouble with its ethical reputation, is very adamant about GMO. So if you don't trust Monsanto for most things, you will especially not trust it to tell you the truth about the safety of its products nor about the completeness of their tests to ensure said safety.

> Also, the fact is that Monsanto, which has had trouble with its ethical reputation, is very adamant about GMO.

It's adamant about the safety of its GMO lines and (in the case of Roundup Ready) the pesticide products that are complementary to them.

It's, OTOH, also a big producer of non-GMO seed and actively markets products to the organic food industry.

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